Baby elephant rescued from a well by villagers in India (VIDEO)

Baby elephant rescued from a well by villagers in India (VIDEO)

A baby elephant playing in a river in their daily outing from the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka.

A baby elephant has been rescued from inside a well near the Indian village of Bundu.

The young calf fell into the unused 12-foot-deep well, which was hidden by brush on all sides, after being separated from its herd, according to Sky News.

The villagers heard the young elephants' cries, and called in a rescue team to help after realizing that the well was too deep for them to hoist the calf out of it.

"The elephant may have come in search of its mother here and was roaming in the jungles when he fell inside the well," Arjun Badaik, assistant conservator of forests Khunti division, told the Times of India.

"A slope was dug into the well, which helped the elephant come out," said Badaik.

It was also speculated that the calf belonged to one of two female elephants who had recently been electrocuted in the area, the Huffington Post pointed out.

Mass deforestation and poaching in the area have forced elephants to search for food and water outside of their natural habitat, which also could have led the baby to fall into the unused well, the Telegraph reported.